‘That
would
be pleasant,’ Lydia said, enjoying a momen
tary elevation which her father promptly brought down to
earth.
‘Most unlikely, I should think,’ Mr Bramwell observed to
his wife. ‘Your sister is not precisely plump in the pocket
herself, my dear, and can scarcely afford such extravagance.’
‘Poor Lydia!’ Louisa repeated, her good humor restored.
* * * *
It was a disappointment, to be sure, but Lydia was deter
mined that it should not oppress her spirits. She was young
enough still to find any change of place an adventure and
any new acquaintance interesting.
London might boast a myriad of attractions, but beyond
the circulating libraries and Ackerman’s Repository, there
was little to regret in not journeying thither. And who could
tell what might await her in Sussex?
She could not recall meeting her mother’s half-sister,
Camilla. Although she was, in fact, mama’s nearest rela
tion, they had never been very close and seemed perfectly
content not to see each other more than once in a decade.
They were quite different in age, of course. Their
mother, Agnes, had the felicity of being twice married:
first to Mr Thomson, which union had produced Mama;
and, upon that gentleman’s demise, the enterprising Agnes had married Mr Denton, a much older man.
Camilla was the child of this second marriage, and had
been born when her sister was already a strapping girl of
thirteen.
Miss Thomson became Mrs Bramwell only five years
later, and had moved to a different part of the country near
London. Agnes passed away when her second daughter was
a child of nine years; Mr Denton, now much stricken in
years, followed her to the next world ten years later.
Camilla inherited his estate, which was not large. It
included her small cottage in the village of Diddlington
near the banks of the Ouse, and an income sufficient to live comfortably but not with any pretension to luxury or profli
gacy.
Though she had passed thirty summers, Camilla Denton
remained unwed. This, more than anything else that she
knew of her aunt, made Lydia uneasy. Why had her aunt
never married? Was she a bitter and mean-spirited old
maid?
She hoped that her aunt would prove to be amiable,
though she was doubtful of the possibility. Someone so
stricken in years was more liable to be crotchety and cross,
she surmised.
With a sigh, she lay her head upon her pillow and fell
asleep, content to let the day’s trouble be sufficient.
If adventure was what Lydia sought, the journey from
London via the black and maroon Royal Mail coach provided an ample portion. Papa and mama could not
afford the most expensive seat, and so she found herself
perched precariously atop the roof, spending most of the
journey clinging to a conveniently placed rail as they
lurched and lunged their way along the roads of the southeast of England.
She had eaten a hearty meal before the coach departed,
since there was no guarantee of further sustenance until
the end of her journey. With strict instructions not to hob
nob with her fellow passengers, there was little to do but to
observe them in stolid silence.
Beside her was an elderly dame whose countenance was
so criss-crossed by fine wrinkles that it appeared like some fantastic map of the streets of London, with her nose rising
up in the middle like the dome of St Paul’s. Several times,
when rounding a particularly sharp bend in the road, she
had clutched at Lydia to save herself from tumbling off the
swaying vehicle. Other than that, she betrayed no interest
in her companion.
Across from them were two gentlemen at the rear. One
was a rotund fellow with a balding pate and unusually
small ears. The other appeared somewhat cadaverous, with
large dark eyes and a pronounced beak which would have
put Wellington’s to shame. They were both of advanced
years - fifty at least - and were generally too preoccupied with keeping themselves in their seats to give Lydia more
than a smile or a wink of encouragement. In her mind, they
became simply ‘Nose’ and ‘Ears’.
On those occasions when the pace of the coach slowed or
they were on a smooth stretch of road, she caught snatches
of their conversation. They were both patrons of the
theater, and for several miles carried on a spirited debate
over the rival merits of Kean and Kemble. Nose, it seemed,
was personally acquainted with both of those illustrious thespians, and regaled the suitably awed Ears with anec
dotes of life on the stage which Lydia suspected were
completely fictitious.
‘There is such nobility,’ Ears argued at one point, ‘in Mr
Kemble’s manner.’
‘Well,’ Nose commented with some contempt, ‘every dog has his day, but I fear that Kemble’s is all but over. Had you
seen Kean in his first appearance as Shylock....’
‘Were you there?’ Ears’s eyes grew round as the coach
wheels.
‘Of course I was.’ Nose seemed insulted at the suggestion
that he might have been absent from such a momentous
occasion. ‘Indeed, he was most grateful for my assistance. He gave me this.’
Here he paused to produce a silver-gilt watch at the end
of an ornate chain. Lydia’s gaze travelled to his pointing
finger and she could just make out what appeared to be a
pair of grotesquely carved faces engraved upon it. Very
theatrical, she considered with distaste. Ears was much
more impressed.
‘By Jove!’ he cried. ‘You certainly have moved in exalted
circles, sir.’
Nose preened himself and almost simpered in his pleasure at having excited such admiration. However, what he
said in reply was lost to Lydia, as a passing phaeton almost
ran them off the road at that very moment. Nose and Ears
shouted a few choice words at the offending Jehu, and even
Miss Map (as Lydia now thought of the old crone beside
her) was roused to mutter something less than complimen
tary. Lydia’s attention wandered, and it was several
minutes before she picked up the thread of their conversation, which now led in a different direction.
‘And your sister also appeared with Kean?’ Ears was
asking.
‘Yes indeed.’ Nose nodded vigorously. ‘She was an excep
tionally gifted actress, but never received the fame she
deserved. Then, of course, she married Mr Cha—’
Once again their coze was interrupted - this time by the guard’s ear-splitting blast upon the yard of tin, which star
tled Lydia herself and occasioned more complaints from
her fellow travellers.
Lydia did not join in their protests, being too preoccupied
with shifting her chip straw bonnet, which had listed
alarmingly to port. Had she been the heroine in one of the
latest romance novels which Louisa so loved, she reflected, she would assuredly have tumbled off the Mail and into the arms of a handsome nobleman. He would have spirited her
off to his castle and sought to steal her virtue. What this
actually would entail, she was not sure. Romances tended
to be somewhat vague on that point. Inevitably, of course,
her lively wit and manifold charms would have soothed the
savage breast of the profligate duke or viscount and he
would have begged for her hand in marriage.
However, as this was not a novel, nothing more alarming
occurred. In fact, they had already arrived at Lewes. Here
Lydia descended from the conveyance with an inward sigh of relief. She was glad that she would be spared any further
discomfort or dangers - especially since the sky was darkening ominously, indicating an impending shower of rain which boded ill for the three remaining occupants of the
coach’s rooftop.
She hoped that Aunt Camilla was already there to meet
her. The inn was respectable-looking, but she did not relish
the thought of waiting about like a servant.
She could hear the cries of the hostlers as they hurried
to change horses, and the general hubbub of activity as
passengers scrambled for a bite of food before the coach
departed once more. Fortunately, she had not been there
five minutes before an elderly man came up to her, bowed hesitantly, and asked, ‘Be you Miss Bramwell?’
Lydia nodded, eyeing him appraisingly.
‘My name’s Flitt, miss. Come this way, if you please,’ he
instructed her, turning toward the inn yard once more. ‘I’ll
take you to your aunt.’
* * * *
Timidity was foreign to Lydia’s nature, but she did own to a slight
frisson
of apprehension as they approached the
antiquated carriage which stood to one side, away from the
frantic bustle surrounding the Mail.
As she drew nearer, the carriage door, with its faded
paint, opened and out stepped a lady who was as different
from the aged termagant of Lydia’s imagination as a rose
is from a thistle.
She had supposed that Aunt Camilla would look much
like Mama. She was mistaken. Where her mother was
short and plump, this lady was tall and willow-thin.
Though her clothes were not in the latest fashion, she wore
them with an air which lent a touch of elegance. Her face
was a pale oval, with dark hair peeping from beneath her
poke bonnet and large blue eyes that looked fearfully out at
the world. Her lips were caught between her pearl-white
teeth at the moment, but Lydia did not doubt that they
were as delightful as the rest of her countenance. She was, in fact a beauty. Who would have thought it?
‘Aunt Camilla?’ Lydia spoke tentatively, considering that
this might, in fact, be someone else who had been sent to
collect her.
‘Dearest Lydia!’ the lady cried, stepping down to embrace her. ‘Well! This is a happy occasion.’
‘You are much prettier than I expected,’ Lydia said with
her usual candor.
Her aunt blushed and looked away. It seemed she was
not accustomed to receiving compliments, even from her
relations.
‘But where is your maid?’ she stammered, casting her gaze around the inn yard.
‘I have none.’
The big blue eyes grew even larger.
‘No maid!’ Aunt Camilla was scandalized. ‘What can your
mother have been thinking? You are far too young to travel
alone! I am astonished.’
In vain did Lydia attempt to explain that it was impos
sible for her parents to afford to pay the expense of sending
a maid with their daughter. Her protests that she was a
sensible girl fell on ears which refused to hear. It simply was inconceivable to the older woman that any girl of
seventeen could be let loose on her own to traipse about the
English countryside without doing irreparable damage to
her reputation and very likely producing a national
calamity.
‘It is difficult to imagine,’ Lydia said at last, ‘what harm
was likely to come to me on the common stage between
London and Lewes.’
‘You do not know the wickedness in this world, dear
child,’ Aunt Camilla commented.
Her dramatic utterance led Lydia to believe that she had
been reading Mr Walpole or Mrs Radcliffe. Further conver
sation only confirmed this suspicion. Her aunt had a strong romantic tendency which her niece did not possess. At the
same time, it seemed to Lydia that she was inordinately
shy and retiring. After her initial homily on the danger
which travel posed to innocent young females, she subsided
into an uncomfortable silence, apparently at a loss for
anything else to say.
‘This is a very fine carriage,’ Lydia said at last.
‘Oh yes!’ Camilla seemed relieved to find some topic of
conversation. ‘Mrs Wardle-Penfield was very generous to
suggest that I might have the use of it.’
‘It is not your own, then?’ Lydia was surprised.
‘Oh, no!’ Her aunt was shocked at the suggestion. ‘I
cannot afford the expense of keeping a carriage. Besides, there is no purpose in keeping one. I live at the edge of the village, and everything needful is easily got to on foot.’